Homeownership gap between Black and White owners is worse now than a decade ago

Anna Bahney, CNN

Sharan White-Jenkins is a proud Black homeowner in Jamaica, Queens, in New York City. She’s part of a line of homeowners that goes back to her grandparents, who purchased a home on the Virginia plantation land where the family had worked as slaves.

“Homeownership in our family is like getting your driver’s license: You just do it,” she said. “You turn 16, you get your license. You work a few years, you buy a house. You build equity.”

White-Jenkins, now a disabled veteran, knows well the wealth-generating power of homeownership. The equity in the home she bought in 2018 has helped her have the money to send her son to college and to consider launching a business.

“I know that’s how we create generational wealth,” White-Jenkins said. “The Brooklyn brownstone my parents bought is now worth over $2 million. When they pass, it comes to me and my sisters. That is wealth we wouldn’t have had if they had rented.”

She also knows well that that generational wealth and home ownership are not as common among Black families as she’d like them to be.

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